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The Invasion of Košice

These 39 furtively taken black and white photographs show the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops to the Eastern Slovakian town of Košice.

The local population met the Soviet and Bulgarian forces with stupor and, occasionally, with slogans painted on buildings or on the pavement. Some locals threw stones at the tanks and put up barricades. On one of the military trucks a swastika in white chalk can be seen, reminding the viewer of a previous occupation of Czechoslovakia.

The photographs were shot by Gabriel Bodnár, a professional photographer from Košice. They are part of a larger set of pictures, the better part of which was seized by the Bratislava ŠtB (Czechoslovak secret police) after the August 1968 events. The photographs featured here survived, however, buried in the ground by Bodnár and a friend of his. In 2005, the pictures have been acquired by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at CEU. They constitute our Fonds HU OSA 391 Photographs of Gabriel Bodnar on the 1968 invasion of Kosice.

Copyrights to the photographs belong to Gabriel Bodnár, Hlavná 14, 040 01 Košice, Slovakia. Permission to use the photographs shall be requested at fotobodnar@fotobodnar.sk.